Battlesloths 2025: The Great Pizza Wars Hands-On At Pax East

Steve Tyminski lives in the great state of New Jersey and is a huge sports fan, especially the Devils/Mets/Jets. He went to college for Criminal Justice and History and has journalism experience. Been a Nintendo Guy for a long as he can remember and grew up with the Mario Brothers. His sense of humor comes out in his writing. Twitter-Follow at https://twitter.com/TumsST

 Published March 13, 2017 10:00 PM

Checking out what Rooster Teeth Games has to offer.

The first group of animals that you think of that love pizza is turtles, of the ninja variety, right? Well, that might change and the new animal might be a sloth after you see Battlesloths 2025: The Great Pizza Wars from Rooster Teeth Games. Let’s jump right into it. I promise that will be the only Ninja Turtle-pizza combination in this write-up.

Battlesloths 2025: The Great Pizza Wars is a fast-paced top-down shooting game where up to four players try to get their hands on all the pizza. Depending on what game mode you’re playing, the amount of slices will differ between rounds of gameplay. The controls are tough to get used to at first but once you do you’ll be a pizza-fighting machine. It took about two matches to feel comfortable with the controls and then after that I felt right at home. You use the control sticks of the Xbox One controller (which is what we were using for the demo) but it will be released on Steam in the spring. Anyway, you can aim your weapon as well as move with the control sticks.

There are twenty weapons in the game and each one plays differently. You might have the bow and arrow for a few seconds, get killed and then pick up the laser sword. The other players will kill your sloth and the only way for you not to get left in the dust is how you adapt to using new weapons and strategies. You can always drop the weapon you have and pick up a brand new weapon; it’s up to you. That’s the joy of the game, you can play it pretty much anyway you want. You can stay back and play it safe until there’s an opening to swoop in and steal some pizza slices or you can go in guns blazing and clear your own path.

The developers wanted to create a game where they could have their friends over, sit on their couch, and mess with each other and with Battlesloths 2025: The Great Pizza Wars you can do just that. The gameplay is so addictive that I found myself not wanting to leave after my appointment at the booth. I just wanted to play a few more games with the development team for the game since we were having such a great time.

The Nuke mode, which we were playing, places a timer in the middle of the map and at when the timer reaches zero, all the pizza scores reset to zero. If you’re losing, you want to let this timer hit zero but if you’re winning, by a wide margin like I was in the one game, you don’t want to let this timer hit zero. I was running in there with one and two seconds left on the timer to reset it to save my victory!

I had just met the developers/producers of the game a few minutes before we started playing and we found ourselves trash talking and taking lighthearted jabs at each other. That should show how additive the gameplay is, I just met these guys and we all felt comfortable enough to zing each other while playing. That’s the style of gameplay coming out and that’s what everyone involved with Battlesloths 2025: The Great Pizza Wars wants; a game that you can sit down with friends and bash them for sucking up the place!

There is minor customization for your sloth since you can dress him/her in a hat. There are over 700 hats for you to unlock in this game so you’ll have some work to do if you want to collect them all. You could get your hands on the Princess Leia hair, an arcade cabinet, dice, or a taco. It will be neat to see what other hats are in the game and how you’ll give your sloth an added piece of charm.

There are several places to play as well and one of the places on the map is Hell. I don’t think I need to paint the picture of Hell for you but there are flaming birds that will kill you if you don’t take them down first so be on guard for that. There is also a candy themed level, a desert themed level and quite a few others. There are environmental hazards on the maps as well so you’ll need to be on guard for those too!

Battlesloths 2025: The Great Pizza Wars looks like a real fun party game that you’ll want to have friends over to play. As I mentioned the controls take a little getting used to but that should only last a few games and then you should be well on your way to being king of the pizza wars.